Bipartisan jobs bill passes House

House OK jobs bill in 'rare agreement' with Pres. Obama - passes the Jumpstart our Business Startups Act (or JOBS Act bill) by 390-23 margin. The Senate is working on its own version

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Senators are set to take up the $109 billion transportation bill Thursday, but debate on some 30 amendments could delay a final vote until next week. Among those are competing amendments on the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline rejected by the White House.

Congress faces an end-of-March deadline for a new transportation bill. Senate Democrats say that nearly 2 million construction workers would be laid off without new funding.

The charge that GOP lawmakers were deliberately trying to stall the economic recovery may be resonating with the electorate. So I guess Republicans didn't have much choice but to at least seem to want to try to help the economy.

Republicans will use this to state "See, we are working on job creation," but it actually won't accomplish much per a blogpost I read at Maddowblog.

But while the American Jobs Act was a sweeping economic measure, intended to create over 1 million jobs in 2012, the House's JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act is a modest bill that's only expected to help around the margins.

In fact, to be more precise, it's six modest bills, four of which have already passed, packaged together to give the appearance of a more substantial piece of legislation. The provisions range from addressing the number of shareholders allowed to invest in community banks to thresholds for SEC registration to shareholder registration requirements.

What's wrong with taking these steps? Nothing, in particular. But to characterize this as a meaningful effort to lower unemployment is kind of silly. I don't doubt Republican leaders will be patting themselves on the back this afternoon, passing a bipartisan bill with the word "jobs" in the title, but no one should be fooled.